Top 180 Henry Fielding Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.”

— Henry Fielding

52. “It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.”

— Henry Fielding

53. “Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.”

— Henry Fielding

54. “Distance of time and place generally cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.”

— Henry Fielding

55. “Setting down in writing, is a lasting memory.”

— Henry Fielding

56. “To say the truth, every physician, almost, hath his favourite disease, to which he ascribes all the victories obtained over human nature.”

— Henry Fielding

57. “We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.”

— Henry Fielding

58. “A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.”

— Henry Fielding

59. “The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any correct judgment of them is that they are never what they seem.”

— Henry Fielding

60. “Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas which, by the means of flatterers, they may entertain of themselves, or the world may conceive of them, have certainly more of mortal than divine about them.”

— Henry Fielding

61. “These are called the pious frauds of friendship.”

— Henry Fielding

62. “A man may go to heaven with half the pains it cost him to purchase hell.”

— Henry Fielding

63. “Enough is equal to a feast.”

— Henry Fielding

64. “Nobody scarce doth any good, yet they all agree in praising those who do. Indeed, it is strange that all men should consent in commending goodness, and no man endeavour to deserve that commendation; whilst, on the contrary, all rail at wickedness, and all are as eager to be what they abuse.”

— Henry Fielding

65. “The woman and the soldier who do not defend the first pass will never defend the last.”

— Henry Fielding

66. “An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.”

— Henry Fielding

67. “He in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.”

— Henry Fielding

68. “Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever.”

— Henry Fielding

69. “A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.”

— Henry Fielding

70. “Life may as properly be called an art as any other.”

— Henry Fielding

71. “A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!”

— Henry Fielding

72. “All nature wears one universal grin.”

— Henry Fielding

73. “Every physician almost hath his favourite disease.”

— Henry Fielding

74. “There’s one fool at least in every married couple.”

— Henry Fielding

75. “Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.”

— Henry Fielding

76. “Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.”

— Henry Fielding

77. “A good heart will, at all times, betray the best head in the world.”

— Henry Fielding

78. “A grave aspect to a grave character is of much more consequence than the world is generally aware of; a barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry.”

— Henry Fielding

79. “When mighty roast beef was the Englishman’s food It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood – Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the roast beef of England. And Old England’s roast beef.”

— Henry Fielding

80. “Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.”

— Henry Fielding

81. “Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?”

— Henry Fielding

82. “Beauty may be the object of liking – great qualities of admiration – good ones of esteem – but love only is the object of love.”

— Henry Fielding

83. “For parents to restrain the inclinations of their children in marriage is an usurped power.”

— Henry Fielding

84. “Now in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.”

— Henry Fielding

85. “A broken heart is a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bills of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases, namely, that no physicians can cure it.”

— Henry Fielding

86. “Tea! The panacea for everything from weariness to a cold to a murder Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.”

— Henry Fielding

87. “To speak a bold truth, I am, after much mature deliberation, inclined to suspect that the public voice hath, in all ages, done much injustice to Fortune, and hath convicted her of many facts in which she had not the least concern.”

— Henry Fielding

88. “Nothing more aggravates ill success than the near approach of good.”

— Henry Fielding

89. “It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.”

— Henry Fielding

90. “Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets, With a third dog one of the two dogs meets; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.”

— Henry Fielding

91. “When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.”

— Henry Fielding

92. “The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.”

— Henry Fielding

93. “The characteristic of coquettes is affectation governed by whim.”

— Henry Fielding

94. “In the forming of female friendships beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.”

— Henry Fielding

95. “It is a good maxim to trust a person entirely or not at all.”

— Henry Fielding

96. “Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.”

— Henry Fielding

97. “Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.”

— Henry Fielding

98. “We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.”

— Henry Fielding

99. “Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation.”

— Henry Fielding

100. “Nothing can be so quick and sudden as the operations of the mind, especially when hope, or fear, or jealousy, to which the other two are but journeymen, set it to work.”

— Henry Fielding